Housing provision and improvement programmes for low income populations in the developing world : a review of approaches and their significance in the European context

Jakub Gałuszka

Housing provision and improvement

programmes for low income

populations in the developing world :

a review of approaches and their

significance in the European context

ISSN 1732–4254 semiannual

BullETiN Of gEOgraphy. SOCiO–ECONOmiC SEriES journal homepages: http://www.bulletinofgeography.umk.pl http://versita.com/bgss

Housing provision and improvement programmes for low income

populations in the developing world. A review of approaches and their

significance in the European context

Jakub gałuszka

Philippine Institute for Development Studies, 106 Amorsolo St., Legaspi Village, Makati, Philippines; Technical Univeristy of Darmstadt,

El-Lissitzky-Strasse 1, D-64287 Darmstadt, Germany; e-mail: kubagal@gmail.com

abstract. The paper deals with the issue of affordable housing provision for low in-come populations in the developing countries and its significance in the European context. My goal is to discuss this topic through the analysis of different approaches to household provision and improvement with special focus on the involvement of communities in various upgrading procedures. Separate sections of the paper refer to the most important approaches developed in the 20th _{and 21}st _{centuries. These} include: site and service, slum upgrading, incremental housing and community-led upgrading which are analysed through the prism of several examples coming from various parts of the world.

The discussion of the strategies formulated in the developing world is linked with the new approaches towards housing provision that are presently promoted or are spontaneously emerging in various cities of Central Europe. These include the is-sues of container-houses construction in Poland and the creation of informal set-tlements by Roma populations in Polish and Slovakian cities.

© 2012 Nicolaus Copernicus University Press. All rights reserved.

article details: Received: 21 March 2012 Revised: 27 June 2012 Accepted: 05 September 2012 Key words: informal settlements, container-houses, site & service, slum upgrading, incremental housing, Central Europe. Contents:

1. Introduction . . . 29

2. Site and service. . . 31

3. Settlement and slum upgrading . . . 32

4. Incremental housing . . . 33

5. Community – based upgrading . . . 35

6. Conclusions . . . 36

Acknowledgements . . . 36

References . . . 36

© 2012 Nicolaus Copernicus University Press. All rights reserved.

Gałuszka, J., 2012: Housing provision and improvement programmes for low income populations in the developing world. A Review of approaches and their significance in the European context. In: Szymańska, D. and Biegańska, J. editors, Bulletin of Geography .

Socio-economic Series, No. 18, Toruń: Nicolaus Copernicus University Press, pp. 29–38. DOI: 10.2478/v10089‒012‒0017‒1

1. introduction

The discussion of the approaches to housing provi-sion for low-income populations in the developing

countries is not only relevant in the ‘Southern’ context but becomes nowadays important in European coun-tries. First of all, in the last several years, authorities of Polish cities started to experiment with the so-called

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konten-ery socjalne) that are supposed to serve as homes for

people who are not able to afford the rents in other locations or who are considered troublesome ten-ants (PAP, 2011). As a consequence ‘houses’ like that have been already constructed in the cities of Bytom, Wilamowice, Sosnowiec (Fig. 1), Poznań, Bydgoszcz (Boruch, 2008; Wybieralski, 2011) and were to be constructed in Łódź and Białystok (PAP, 2011; Boruch, 2008). The construction typically resembles the buildings that have been already set up in Bytom where 20 ‘houses’ were inhabited in the middle of 2010. Their size usually ranges from 10 to 16 m2 _and

they are equipped with basic amenities like: shower, toilet, kitchen annex with oven. The  overall cost of 120 container-houses which were supposed to be constructed was estimated to reach 3.5  million PLN. Two years after the removal of tenants to the men-tioned 20  units, 5 were reported to have entirely deteriorated: one was set on fire, another one also burned in fire, while two other ones were robbed and devastated. Renovation of 5 modules will cost the lo-cal government 78,500  PLN (Nowacka-Goik, 2012; Węgiel, 2010; Nowak, 2012).

The quoted example partially illustrates why the strategy of container-houses construction, perceived by local authorities as a  remedy for housing short-age and ‘problematic’ tenants, is in fact replicates the mistakes experienced in other locations and leads to social segregation of city’s inhabitants, their social isolation and stigmatisation (even though local au-thorities may claim something else).

Secondly, several Central European countries are encountering ‘the problem’ of illegal Roma set-tlements rising on the outskirts of their cities. With the dissolution of their traditional nomadic lifestyle Roma people started to construct small shanty-towns and try to develop new sources of livelihood. Such set-tlements are an almost ideal copy of the neighbour-hoods that are being raised by poor people all over the ‘developing’ world (see Fig. 2 and 3). The similarities can be seen in the design, low social status and poverty of their inhabitants. Unfortunately, the most common reaction of European urban authorities and better-off populations to that problem copies the worst models from the southern countries. Instead of looking at the newest solutions the authorities of Slovakian cities like Ostrożany, Michalovce, Trebiszov (Pietrzyk, 2010) prefer to separate themselves from the unwanted settlements by concrete walls, do nothing like the au-thorities of city of Wrocław in Poland (Harłukowicz, 2012) or like the French authorities, throw the Roma people out of the country (BBC, 2010).

Both of the mentioned processes – the delivery of container-houses for poor populations by local authorities and the creation of illegal settlements – have already happened and have been analysed for decades in the developing countries. That is why it is worth to take a look at their approaches towards the mentioned issues. The  experiences and case studies presented in this paper could provide a  number of suggestions as to whether the proposed solution of container-houses is feasible in the European context and if it follows any reasonable model. At the same time it can illustrate that there exist ways in which illegal Roma settlements can be upgraded and can become normal parts of cities.

The key argument of the paper is that the crucial element helping the poor to get out of poverty is linked not only to housing conditions but also to their social empowerment. Probably the first and most acknowledged scientific reflection about the central role of communities in housing upgrading processes was formulated by John Turner in the 1970s. In the famous book ‘Housing by People: Towards Autonomy in Building Environments’ he explains how conven-tional-housing policies are unable to accommodate the growing needs for housing in rapidly urbanising countries. Therefore, as he notices, the construction of shanty towns should not be perceived as a prob-lem but as a solution to the housing shortage (Turner, 1976). Facing the inability of governments to provide shelter, people have no other choice than to construct it by themselves. Those temporary settlements, if not destroyed by governments due to land policies, prop-erty issues and the rhetoric of poor ‘quality of life’, usually become consolidated parts of the town. As he argues the bureaucratic systems represented by local authorities or large organisations ‘standardise proce-dures and products in order to operate economically. By necessity this conflicts with the local variety and housing priorities’ (Turner, 1976: 51). In other words conventional housing might be unsuitable for the poorest populations in developing countries due to its high costs and low use value as opposed to self-constructed houses.

The  process of consolidation of informal settle-ments was first observed in Latin America where, after decades, authorities started to undertake efforts to upgrade them instead of destroying. Already at that stage we can speak about housing improvement programmes where people are the main actors of the process (as they are the ones who occupy vacant land and build their houses). Usually government-led im-provement comes at the latest stage (the approach will be described in a further part of the paper).

Except the case of Roma population none of these problems is present in Polish or Slovakian cases. People do not need to build their own houses by themselves as a response to rapid urbanisation pro-cesses. Moreover, nowadays most of them have access to a decent shelter. That is why the strategy of con-tainer-houses construction, proposed by local Polish authorities, aims rather at gaining access to valuable housing in the city center by pushing away tenants who do not pay their rent (Urbański, 2009). This process may lead to the beautification of inner cities which are transformed from social housing districts into top-end areas. For obvious reasons the discussed policy leads as well to the gentrification of city cen-tres. Simultaneously, the creation of ‘container hous-ing’ provokes another process in the suburban zones of Polish cities. Its basic characteristics and potential social impact echo the problems that were encoun-tered in the site and service projects realised all round the world in the middle of the last century. The crea-tion of this type of housing can be also related to the growing ghettoisation of Polish cities which results in the separation of the populations perceived as a ‘good ones’ from the ‘pathological ones’ (Szczepański, Ślęzak-Tazbir, 2007: 44). Assuming that only in the capital city of Warsaw there is around 50,000 people who owe the city money for the rents, one can imagine the amount of potential ‘recipients’ of the container type of housing who theoretically might be located in the city suburbs (Szpala, Zubik, 2012). On the other hand, along with the gentrification of large parts of Warsaw, gated communities are becoming more pop-ular what can reflect the perceived need of separation of different social groups. In the case of Roma settle-ments the real, physical separation is already taking place (as mentioned in regard to Slovakian examples).

2. Site and service

Prior to the Turner’s revolutionary book and the popularisation of the slum upgrading approach there already existed programmes which, at least in theory, were supposed to provide housing to the people. Site and service is one of the schemes used to achieve that goal. The  essential element of site and service programmes is the limitation of cost in contrast to conventional social-housing. Even though there does not exist one unified model of site and service pro-jects (as they can vary a lot) one can distinguish some common characteristics. In most of cases the land is divided into equal plots of minimal size and provided

with infrastructure access. The incoming population receives some form of secured tenure or the right to use the land. Often the project might be supported with loans or a  mortgage system. Sometimes the plots are provided with the walls, roofs, etc. The strat-egy of site and service was largely supported by the World Bank but not many of the implemented

fig. 1. Container-houses in the Sosnowiec, Poland

Source: Grzegorz Celejewski, http://katowice.gazeta.pl/

katowice/51,35063,10755446.html? i=0

fig. 2. Roma settlement in Wrocław, Poland

Source: Maciej Świerczyński, http://wyborcza.pl/

1,75248,11260380,Wroclaw_bezradny_wobec_ nielegalnych_koczowisk_Romow.html

32

projects succeeded in financial terms (United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Pacific). There are several reasons why these projects failed to a great degree.

Firstly, site and service projects were usually lo-cated outside of the city and automatically the people who were placed out there were also forced to give up their original jobs. In the most cases that meant the inability to continue their professional activities in the new surrounding. As pointed out by Turner, the basic instrument of the poor, essential for their sur-vival, are the personal linkages and informal activities (Turner, 1976). Relocated populations, in most cases, lose all of that. In that context site and service projects could be perceived more as a burden for the people who happen to be allocated a plot. Similarly, resettle-ment projects which are supposed to provide possi-bilities for decent housing or emergency relief in most of cases have negative impacts (especially in regard to employment issues) (Initial Policy Recommendations on Relocation Framework, Institute for Popular Democracy, IDP). In that context one can recall the cases of various site and service projects implemented in South Africa. They turned out to be instruments of apartheid politics, which led to conscious segregation of the country’s population (Frescura, 1993). The fa-mous townships are presently the zones of criminality and poverty, years after they were constructed.

The presented characteristic of site & service dis-tricts was worsened by the lack of sufficient social facilities which, in any case, increased the initial cost of the project and were often not included in the site development plan. Additionally, site and service pro-jects did not support capacity building and enhance-ment of communities. At this point one can remember

that issues of participation is an essential instrument for improving the capacities of community members. Moreover ‘the processes of participation and democ-ratisation are central if the latest generation of pov-erty reduction initiatives are to have an impact which is both substantive in scale and lasting in time’ (Fiori et al., 2001: 48). This element, at the early stage of site and service programmes, was mostly neglected.

Nevertheless, even if quantitative measures show that site and service projects were financially unsuc-cessful, there exist examples of projects which turned out to work well both in economic and social terms. One of those is the Aranya project in Indore, India which is still perceived as a  successful case study of a  low-income housing development project. The mentioned case proves that careful attention giv-en to community developmgiv-ent, financial subsidiarity and culturally appropriate design can lead to positive outcomes also in the case of site and service schemes (Minimum Cost Housing Group, 2006).

3. Settlement and slum upgrading

The settlement upgrading approach I have mentioned above is an essential alternative for any displace-ment project. According to that approach the exist-ing settlements are upgraded through investment in infrastructure. Usually settlers who have constructed a  neighbourhood receive a  chance to access secure tenure and new amenities. The  intervention is usu-ally covered by state funds – which initiusu-ally makes it costly and does not support cost recovery but on the other hand does not include a  large amount of demolition and displacement. Thanks to this people do not lose the existing networks, social structure, sources of income and their households, which they might have been constructing for years. The upgrad-ing process has stable repeatable elements like: ini-tial surveying, tenure regularisation procedures and physical upgrading. It  can vary, however, in many elements (United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Pacific). Perhaps the maximum number of possible actions was undertaken in one of the most ambitious projects in Favela Bairro, Rio de Janeiro. It included: ‘the installation and upgrading of water and sanitation infrastructure, and public and domes-tic lighting networks; reforestation; the opening and paving of roads, squares and walkways; elimination of natural hazards; the construction of new housing for essential resettlement; the setting up of rubbish fig. 3. Baseco slum, Manila, Philippines

collection systems; the commencement of land tenure regularisation processes; the construction and reform of buildings and their subsequent use as nursery schools, community centres, and income generation and training centres; the construction and operation of new sports and leisure facilities; the construction of commercial establishments (kiosks); and the con-struction and operation of social and urban advice centres’ (Fiori et al., 2001: 48).

The approach firstly promoted in Latin American cities has spread around the world. It turned out to be a  more successful and sustainable solution than site and service projects. The success of the approach can be illustrated by the Kampung Improvement Programme which, since its inception in 1969, has spread to 800 cities in Indonesia to benefit approxi-mately 30 million people. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). The  programme concentrated mostly on infrastructure improvement as 88% of its fund-ing was devoted to that element. Nonetheless, the remaining funds were devoted to social development and economic development through a  small-scale credit scheme.

The approach has, however, its limitations. Firstly, it might not be feasible in socio-political and eco-nomic terms. The  problems are usually linked to scarcity of land in modern metropolises of the third world, market and real-estate processes. They  can make it extremely difficult to keep and upgrade the settlements without secured tenure as these are often located in the most desired spaces in the city. One can remember the famous case of Mumbay, Dharavi slums or settlements in Metro Manila where ‘govern-ment (…) allocated less than 1.0 percent of the total government expenditures for the housing sector in re-cent years, or less than one-tenth of a perre-cent of GDP on the average. This makes Philippine public spend-ing on housspend-ing one of the lowest in Asia’ (Philippine Development Plan for Shelter 2011‒2016: Habito, 2009). The government of the Philippines, therefore, does not devote sufficient funds to the upgrading process in the numerous amount of slum settlements and, at the same time, has to face huge pressure to sell the valuable land in the centre of Makati or Manila. In that situation the settlement upgrading approach can become a  less favorable strategy (from the govern-ment’s point of view) in the wide variety of possible approaches.

In general these problems do not occur in the depopulating cities of Poland. Additionally ‘upgrad-ing’ or ‘urban renewal’ processes are usually market-driven. Nonetheless, an important conclusion drawn

from the variety of presented projects is the focus on social development and accessibility of relevant ser-vices. Their presence is perceived as a crucial element helping the poor population to get out of poverty. In the case of Poland, relocation tends to place people who have problems in social ghettos located far from the most important urban services. This kind of ap-proach resembles the early site and service projects from decades ago rather than the contemporary de-velopment programmes.

4. incremental housing

Another important strategy for the provision of hous-ing for low-income population in the develophous-ing countries are incremental housing schemes. The main difference between incremental housing and the site and service approach is related to the order of actions undertaken on the project site. In incremental hous-ing projects people firstly receive access to land (or ti-tle if the family has the financial resources). There is no infrastructure provided – only access to water. As Margerita Greene and Eduardo Rojas notice, in-cremental building has a ‘process-based nature. This is a process that lasts for many years and, in many cases, never ends. Many families work on the improvement and extension of their homes throughout an entire family cycle, first to obtain the minimum standards in size and quality, and later to accommodate changes in family structure or to get income from their invest-ment in the house’ (Greene, Rojas, 2008: 93) For that reasons incremental housing is cheaper than site and service projects but not necessarily faster – the fully equipped house is developed by the families after approximately 8‒10 years (Greene, Rojas, 2008: 93). Nevertheless, many argue that incremental housing responds to people’s needs in a better way than site and service schemes. This solution provides settlers with protection from water, insects and other dan-gers, which is considered more urgent than sanita-tion, electricity, etc. After the construction of the basic house nucleus people start to work on infrastructure development. In the case of site and service projects they can get access to the infrastructure right away but the cost of plots is higher – the ones who purchase them might not have afterward the financing capac-ity necessary for the fast construction of their homes (if they are not provided from the beginning). Apart form that, in the case of site and service projects, quite often the proposed housing units are not extendable

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re-allocated into tiny boxes are unable to conduct basic improvement works unless they destroy the initial building they had received. As a  consequence, the living conditions of the people concerned cannot im-prove if the family enlarges. Additionally, the density of the settlement is often not increased vertically so the suburbs are continuously sprawling.

Another advantage of incremental housing is the fact that, by necessity, it involves people’s participa-tion. Although this element is generally positive, it also generates the risk of forcing community action in a  situation in which that community might not necessarily exist (e.g.  in the case of newcomers to the projected settlement) (United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Pacific). Generally speaking, community action enhances strong net-works and relations between the settlement inhabit-ants, increases their resilience and in general dimin-ishes social pathologies. Nevertheless, as it has been mentioned before, people might lack the necessary skills or resources to conduct neighbourhood im-provements effectively and efficiently. That is why it is important to remember the incremental housing process can be enhanced by adequate technical and financial support. Such support is ‘a  public policy concern, as it can provide significant benefits for low income families and the community as a whole, such as improvements in the safety and health of the ben-eficiary households’ (Greene, Rojas, 2008: 94) That is why the incremental process can be facilitated through economic, social, and technical intermedia-tion provided by the authorities.

A  good example of a  successful initiative is the case of Khuda Ki Basti in Hyderabad Pakistan, com-menced by Hyderabad Development Authority in the 1986 (Van der Linden, 1997: 86). The project was facilitated on various levels including: social, finan-cial and technical. For instance, in regard to the last mentioned element, assistance in building and design was provided for the newcomers – families received help when constructing their houses. Similarly, de-sign assistance was provided for the construction of internal sewers, as well as the entire schema of floor plan was developed by the authorities. What is equally important is the fact that the new inhabit-ants of the area received assistance in the provision of suitable building materials from the informal con-struction sector. All of the mentioned elements, as well as the provision of a site plan, which included the designation of 15% of the area for public ameni-ties and public spaces, contributed to the relatively fast consolidation of the area.

Furthermore, the local authorities, thanks to social intermediation, managed to eliminate land specula-tions in the project area. In order to receive access to the plot, applicants had to present themselves with the whole household and all household’s goods. They  were accommodated in a  provisional camp, the ‘reception area’, where they had to live for about a fortnight. Secondly, the beneficiaries did not receive allotment orders for their plots. Instead, after a first, modest down payment, a small monthly amount had to be deposited for infrastructure provision. ‘Only when the full costs of the plot and infrastructure have been paid will allotment papers be issued. In this way, any long absence from the plot can be punished by cancelling the application and, with it, the allocated plot’ (Van der Linden, 1997: 86‒87).

All in all, as Asad Azfar and Aun Rahman con-clude, issues like public safety, provision of education, infrastructure, assistance in building procedures, mi-crofinance schemes, etc. are handled better in Khuda Ki Basti than in a  similar project developed on an informal basis (Azfar, Rahman, 2004: 5‒11).

These observations do not prove, however, the ab-solute superiority of the incremental housing process over the site and service one. They rather show that government support and transfer of informal solu-tions (as the incremental process basically replicates the informal process) into formal procedures can be successful. In most of the cases site and service pro-cesses turned out to be expensive and not sustainable in social terms, but the latter can be rather linked with the lack of sufficient support from the govern-ment. What seems to be an objective advantage of the incremental process is that it is replicable, it involves participation and generates more economic activities than the classical site and service projects (United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Pacific). The issue of participation though, as it has been mentioned before, can be more tricky and linked to cultural circumstances, which at least in the case of Khuda Ki Basti turned out to complicate the proposed participation procedures (Van der Linden, 1997: 87).

Similarly, one should expect that participation in the case of Polish container-houses or in Roma set-tlements could be problematic due to small social skills of the ‘beneficiary’ populations. What seems to be a larger problem, though, is the complete lack of that kind of procedures, not even in terms of the design of container-houses or the design of the settle-ment, but in the wider city scale. Additionally, it is not even possible to discuss the incremental development of container-houses as they are not extendable. Any interference in their design could be perceived by

the authorities as an attempt to break the law which strictly defines building standards and procedures. In this way, people located in container-houses lose the simplest possibility to improve their living con-ditions by enhancing their households with simple, manual work.

5. Community – based upgrading

All of the presented approaches, with their advantag-es and limitations, are being applied in various parts of the world. Each of them, as it has been described before, varies in the context of community involve-ment into the process of housing provision. As it has been described, they vary with respect to community participation. In recent years, probably the most in-teresting innovation in terms of housing provision for low-income groups are the projects planned, facilitat-ed and implementfacilitat-ed by the communities themselves. In their case the logic of the state as a provider is ex-changed for the role as a partner of the empowered community.

One of these alternative approaches was recently developed by the Asian Coalition of Housing Rights which unites poor people associations from Asian countries. One of such associations working in the field of settlement upgrading is Homeless People’s Federation Philippines, which has achieved a consid-erable success in the field of provision of housing for poor communities. Their approach resembles the tra-ditional approach of slum upgrading. Nevertheless, the difference lies in the central role of the com-munity in the process. Comcom-munity members are responsible for gathering their own savings through the communal savings schemes. Communities sup-ported by NGOs use the legislative mechanism in the Philippines to negotiate the right to secure tenure. Except direct negotiations with the government they try to access land through different means both in regard to government and private land (for instance, vacant government land can be acquired through presidential proclamations or private land can be bought through the Community Mortgage Program) (Housing and Urban Development Coordination Council). At the same time, those communities are responsible for surveying the settlements and can take part in designing their new layouts. The capaci-ties of community members are enhanced by design workshops or exhibits of model housing that aim to improve people’s building skills (Asian Coalition for Housing Rights).

What is perhaps even more important than the ambition of self-governance in community based projects are the networking activities undertaken by the communities and assisting NGOs. Presently, in various Asian cities, those networks are working on implementing the Asian Coalition for Community Action programme which aims to develop city-wide upgrading by communities themselves. In other words, communities are developing regional, na-tional and city information systems, which provide measures for integrated action on a wide scale. These instruments allow communities to take a leading role in the upgrading process and negotiate with govern-ments on equal terms (Asian Coalition for Housing Rights).

This kind of approach in obvious ways reaches further than any other presented strategy for the provision of housing. As the main advantage one could point to the leading role of communities in the process. This element maximises the advan-tages of participation that occur more sporadically in other approaches. Community action empow-ers previously marginalised people. As many argue (Shelter Associates, Slumdwellers/Shackdwellers International, Asian Coalition for Housing Rights, Habitat International Coalition) slum inhabitants are able to provide the best solutions for upgrading their settlements and housing, and similarly to the incremental process, they gain the skills necessary for managing their projects (especially taking into account exchanges and learning sessions with other members of the networks of the poor). Moreover, the savings generated for upgrading diminish the neces-sary input of government funds (which, as mentioned before, is in the Philippines case minimal).

On the other hand, this kind of approach can work very well in societies with a long established spirit of collective action and the ability to quickly increase their capacities. The results might be less promising in other cultural surroundings where specialist knowl-edge could not be transferred in a fast and efficient manner. In these cases there is a risk that settlements could remain, for instance, in the hazardous areas endangered by natural disasters. Nonetheless, the ex-amples of voluntary resettlement in Thailand (facili-tated by the Community Organizations Development Institute) show the capacity of communities to rea-sonably evaluate the risks or wide public interest.

All in all, the approach of community-based upgrading programmes spreads around the whole world thanks to the work of such networks as Slum Dwellers International, Asian Coalition of Housing Rights, Urban Poor Federation, Habitat International

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Coalition for Community Action programme we can already see the results of the implementation of 500 small community upgrading projects and 50 compre-hensive housing projects by poor communities who gather finance, plan and realize the mentioned pro-jects. The number of projects is expected to grow on a yearly basis (Asian Coalition for Housing Rights).

6. Conclusions

All of the discussed approaches are still being im-plemented with various results around the world. The tendency to move away from the basic site and service project to settlement-upgrading and incre-mental housing has brought positive effects to the communities. The  border between different ap-proaches becomes more and more obscure – even if the sequence of undertaken actions is different in each case, all approaches devote more and more attention to social, economic and cultural issues as crucial ele-ments of community upgrading. The mentioned cases of Arayna, Khuda Ki Basti, Favela Bairro, Kampung Improvement Program and the activities linked with the Asian Coalition of Community Action program, show the significance of an interdisciplinary ap-proach towards housing provision and upgrading. Despite the mentioned achievements, the challenge continues to increase along with the growing poor populations in the world. Probably the most sig-nificant conclusion of the analysed approaches is the turn form top-down centralised governance into the decentralised approach. Specific governments in the developing world begin to understand that they are not able to solve the problem of inadequate housing by themselves. Consequently, they become open to the approaches developed by the poor communities. That openness and the ability of communities to act for themselves will decide, in the coming years, about the shape of policies towards the housing provision and upgrading for the world low-income populations.

In the Polish or European context the presentation of approaches for housing provision should not serve as a toolkit for their realisation. It should, however, be treated as a  suggestion that the latest proposals of Polish cities are not new at all but they have been discussed, analysed and implemented for decades in different parts of the world. The approach proposed in Poland resembles the site and service model which has been the most problematic and ineffective on

a world scale. Apart from that it omits the most im-portant element of the whole housing process – the people.

In the light of the presented analysis the Polish so-lution of container-housing may lead to the creation of social ghettos, which reproduce social pathologies to a bigger extent than it happens nowadays in de-teriorated central districts. The  proposed solutions should be reconsidered in terms of community par-ticipation, financial and social sustainability. In this context one should remember that perhaps in the future Poland will become a country attractive for im-migrants who, in general, tend to occupy the cheap-est possible accommodations in their new countries. Instead of living in the areas where they could benefit from the rising Polish economy they might end up in the constantly growing zones of site and service suburban districts. Then perhaps, if Polish authorities do not learn from the world experiences, they as well as whole society will have to go through the whole process of housing provision, as presented in the pa-per. It seems the authorities of several Slovakian cities have already started to reproduce the old mistakes in regard to Roma settlements, the mistakes that had already been made decades ago, in much poorer and less democratic countries of the world.

acknowledgements

The  publication was created thanks to the support from DAAD scholarship and Erasmus Mundus Cathegory B Scholarship.

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